Michele Bachmann Thinks We Had It Better Under Slavery

Michele Bachmann is back out there proving she's completely un-electable as president. Today in what history lesson did the Minnesota Republican ignore in elementary school, we discover Bachmann thinks black Americans were actually BETTER OFF during the slavery era. Oh, sorry, perhaps I should have warned you to swallow all liquids before reading this, lest they be spit across the computer screen?

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I guess I just supposed Michele Bachmann's name would clue you in. This is, after all, the same woman who thought the nation's founders "worked tirelessly against slavery" ... when the average fifth grader knows Washington and Jefferson were slaveowners. This time, though, Bachmann has really put her foot in it.

The first presidential candidate to put her name on a pledge from uber-conservative group The Family Leader called “The Marriage Vow -- A Declaration of Dependence Upon Marriage and Family," Bachmann was signing her name to a document that's anti-same sex marriage, anti-Islam, anti-abortion, anti-divorce, etc. On the flip side, it's pro-family, pro-fidelity, and pro-discrimination.

It's so "pro-family," in fact, that the folks who drafted it think life was better way back in the dark ages, when Americans of color were not people but property ... all because they weren't aborting their babies or, gasp, having babies out of wedlock. Here's just a sample from the pledge that Bachmann signed her name to:

Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President.

The dizzying logic that prompted this comparison fits right in with a presidential candidate who once tried comparing our economy to the horrors of the Holocaust (you guessed it, that was Bachmann), but that doesn't mean it makes even the slightest bit of sense.

Technically, it's true: babies born under slavery might have had two parents. Might, because, let's face it, back under slavery, two slaves were encouraged to be married not because they loved each other but because someone who owned them thought it was a good idea to keep the men from running.

These kids were likely to have a mom who was just a kid herself too -- slave women were known to start having kids at just 13 years old. And they were likely to be one of many kids, because slave owners would dangle a mother's freedom over her head if she promised to produce a whole slew of kids to work the plantation. Because, of course, those parents weren't free to raise their kids the way they wanted. They were someone else's property, and so were the kids.

Just reading all that unpleasantness, it's no wonder Bachmann tends to skip sections of the past that don't jive with the way her speech is going. I don't like to think that Americans treated other human beings like that. But the fact is, it happened. And I'm willing to bet the average American would rather their kid be living in a single parent household than be a piece of property.

But Bachmann signed her name to this pledge. She acknowledged the existence of slavery, and admitted she thinks it wasn't all that bad ... at least not compared to being a single mom in 2011.